A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

nation which has reached the abyss which now confronts Rome, by her own willing, her own fatness and ambition and greed, never retreats from that abyss. The leper cannot remove the marks of his disease; the blind man cannot restore his sight; the dead man cannot rise again. “You have thought me evil, the image of dictatorship. But I am what the people deserve. Tomorrow, I shall die as all men die. But I tell you that worse men than myself will follow me! There is a more inexorable law than any law ever made by man. It is the law of death for corrupt nations, and the minions of that law are already stirring in the wombs of history. There are many who are alive today, young and lustful and without faith. They will not fail. So passes Rome.” He lifted his goblet and drank it to the last drop in a sad and reckless gesture. “I drink to the corpse of Rome.”

Drink to the corpse of the nation